


Demiromantic Doctor in the Photo

by Nocticola



Series: Ace/Aro characters [15]
Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: 1x17 The Skull in the Desert, 6x10 The Body in the Bag, Ace writer, Bisexual Angela Montenegro, Bisexual Female Character of Color, Canon Bisexual Character, Demiromantic Temperance Brennan, Demiromantic writer, Episode: s06e09 Doctor in the Photo, Gen, aromantic spectrum character, post-6x10 The Body in the Bag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2018-12-25 02:36:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12026331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nocticola/pseuds/Nocticola
Summary: About queer, I think Angela is the type of person who would embrace it for its inclusiveness and I think Brennan would mostly know it from academia.Will probably write a 2nd chapter about this later. I will definitely write mire demiro!Brennan.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AccioInvisibilityCloak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AccioInvisibilityCloak/gifts).



Things are the right side up again. She is normal again, or as normal as she ever is. But the events of the case have still left her quite shaken. Especially what she told Booth. Maybe she shouldn’t have done that. It felt right in the moment. But it left both of them upset. Hopefully Hannah will not end their friendship if she finds out. She really made a mess of things. She needs her friends. As much as she now feels that she would want to be with Booth, fully, the way he asked of her a year ago, she needs her friends more. 

She needs to talk about all this with someone. Maybe she should have had Booth call Angela after all. She leaves the Jeffersonian again and makes her way to Angela and Hodgins place. When she gets there, she gets second thoughts again. Should she just talk to Angela in the morning, instead of bothering her this late at night? Is she just being selfish today, first telling Booth about her feelings and now bothering Angela? But she decides to go with her feelings. She has hid from them long enough.

She rings the doorbell, sees some lights turn on, and she hears sounds. Soon, Angela appears at the door, in a nightgown and a robe.  
“Angela. I’m so sorry for waking both of you at this hour. But… I need to talk to you.”  
"Of course, sweetie. Come in. I've really worried about you the last couple of days "  
"It has been 3 days, but thank you. I, I am better now."  
"I'm glad to hear it. What was going on with you?"

They’re sitting on the couch in the living room. Brennan took off her wet jacket and she’s playing with her dolphin ring. Angela notices it but doesn’t say anything.  
“I… I related to the victim. She seemed a lot like me, at first glance. But I realized, she wasn’t like me, I wasn’t like her.”

Angela takes Brennan’s hand and squeezes it gently. “I’m glad you realized that, sweetie. You’re not alone. You have people who love you. And you love us.”  
“Yes, I realize that now. Thank you, Angela.” She squeezes her hand back, before going back to playing with her ring and looking down at her hands.  
“I… I realized something, about that last bit.” She’s not quite sure how to continue. Angela waits patiently until she finds her words.  
“I told him… that I made a mistake,” she’s not quite ready to say his name yet. Luckily Angela is intuitive about these types of things.  
“Good for you,” Angela hugs her, and while it takes Brennan by surprise, she does appreciate it. “But bad for Booth.” Brennan freezes a little at Angela’s words and she’s glad they are not facing each other. She sighs. She knows Angela is not exactly wrong. They break the hug.

“I know. He told me he’s with Hannah and that he adjusted. I promised him I would do the same.”

Angela puts a comforting hand on her shoulder. “It’s alright for that to hurt. You’ve been working together for such a long time. Your relationship has changed a lot lately. If you now realize you feel differently for him than you did before, it’s good for you to deal with those feelings. But you also have to accept that he moved on. You two just, need to figure out how to deal with that.”

Brennan gives Angela a tired smile. “It’s, peculiar. I… I haven’t felt like this before. I didn’t understand this before. This desire to just be with one person, exclusively. I understand wanting to be with someone for sexual purposes, I understand building companionship based on sexual compatibility, which is, I’m sure, one of the reasons you and Hodgins wanted to and eventually, got married.” 

Angela gives her an uncertain smile. She knows Brennan doesn’t mean anything bad by her words. And they do have a good sex life. She doesn't see anything bad about acknowledging that. 

“But wanting something different than that? ‘More’ than that?” Brennan even does air quotes around more herself, and Angela finds it adorable.  
“I didn’t understand it. I’m still not quite sure I understand it now. But I did understand Booth wanted different things from what we were, when he asked me before. I know I couldn’t give that to him, that I didn’t feel like that towards him. That I didn’t want him, the same way. But now… I think I might.” Brennan gives a tiny incredulous laugh. “Honestly, I thought it might be made up. Romantic love, romance, all of it. It’s just, chemical reactions in your brain. Just an excuse people made to not end up alone. Or maybe it just didn’t work for me.”

“Oh, sweetie.” Angela hugs Brennan again. They just hug each other quietly for a time. Angela is thinking. After she comes to a conclusion, she doesn’t let go of Brennan but pulls back a little so she can make eye contact with her. “Hey, do you wanna come with me to this place soon with me? It’s this place where you can talk about this type of stuff and maybe it will end up helping you. Because, people work in many different ways and attraction can work differently for different people. Like for me, I’m bi, so I’m attracted to people of multiple genders both physically and emotionally, but that’s not the way things work for everyone. ”

Brennan looks at Angela, she is slightly confused. “I tell you that I think I’m in love with a man and you start talking about the queer community. That sounds…” her voice fades, she seems disbelieving. 

“Hey, it seems like you didn’t experience romantic attraction until now, that’s a real thing. We could go check out the DC queer scene, see if we’ll find a label for you. If you want one. How about this weekend?”

Brennan still seems slightly apprehensive. “Couldn’t we just look something up in the internet?”  
“And miss an anthropological opportunity to meet more queer people? Investigate labels and customs and behaviors. C’mon, it would be fun. I know of a couple of places I could take you. They should also be pregnancy friendly.”

Brennan gives Angela her first genuine smile of the night. “You’re right.” They hug again. “Thank you for this, Angela. I know we’ve both been doing our own things recently. I’ve missed this.”  
“Oh, of course, Brennan. What are best friends for?” They continue hugging for a moment. When they break apart, Angela continues, “Are you OK going home? Or do you want to stay here for the night?”  
“I’m fine, now, thanks Ange. It is best that I go home.”  
“OK. We’ll go out this weekend. Have some fun together before I become a Mom.”  
“I love you, Ange.”  
“I love you too, sweetie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About queer, I think Angela is the type of person who would embrace it for its inclusiveness and I think Brennan would mostly know it from academia.
> 
> Will probably write a 2nd chapter about this later. I will definitely write mire demiro!Brennan.


	2. Female Friendships before male romantic partners

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took me 6 months and a day to finally write this (and I'm also 2 days late from when I promised to write this, but I finally watched the last two episodes on April 2nd (12th anniversary of me starting to watch Bones) and I was too overcome with emotion about the end to manage to write this. 
> 
> Hopefully this was still enjoyable after the long wait! :)

When Angela gets into Brennan's car so they can go to a meet-up, the first thing she obviously wants to know is,  
"How did it go with Hannah? Did you talk everything out?"

Brennan pauses in getting the car going (she's not like Booth, she won't endanger traffic just because she needs to have a conversation), and turns to look at Angela. She has a slight smile on her face. 

"It went very well, we talked and drank and were flirted with by a bunch of creeps. I explained to her that I understand that she and Booth are together, and that I will do as you told me, that I will move on and attempt to get over my feelings for Booth. She was very understanding, I really understand what Booth sees in her." 

"That's great!" Angela says with only a slight hesitation in her voice and smile. She likes Hannah. She hasn't spent that much time with her, but she has enjoyed her company. But there is still a big part of her that is protective of her best friend. 

Brennan still hasn't started driving yet when she asks,  
"Angela, are you sure we should be doing this now? You're pregnant, you just bought a house. Should you be helping with the move? 

Angela laugh, "I'm very pregnant, sweetie, Hodgins has it covered. I don't have to do anything before all the big stuff has been moved, I'd just be in the way. And I wanna do this with you, now when I still can." 

"I suppose that's all true. So, were exactly are we going?" 

"You start driving, I'll put the address in the GPS. It's this meet up type thing, where you can talk with people from the community, ask about labels and share experiences. It should be interesting. 

"I-I feel like I should be honest. I'm still not quite sure about this Ange." 

"Brennan, it's gonna be fine." 

"But... But when I was out with Hannah I checked out guys and flirted with a few. I don't do that with women. I'm not sure I'm different enough to qualify." Brennan seems really distressed at the idea now. 

"Hey, sweetie, come here," Angela pulls Brennan into a hug that she reciprocates surprisingly easily. They pull apart again, and Brennan seems more calm.  
"I'm gonna tell you something I haven't really really talked about with anyone else. Not even Hodgins knows. Remember my boyfriend Kirk, who died?" (Brennan nods) "Well, afterwards I was worried about... about my commitment issues. I could only be with Kirk during my vacation, and I loved him. Why couldn't I give more of myself to him? I worried about that. I was happy and fine with being bisexual but I decided to do a little more digging and... I found the aromantic community online. I found out that some people experience romantic attraction differently or not at all, or they have different attitudes to romance. I look around a little at the community and it was so nice. Talking with them and reading their discussions really helped, even though I eventually came to the conclusion that I wasn't aromantic. But they are very helpful and they are fine with people looking for answers, even if that answer ends up being 'this isn't my particular community'. There's no problem with just talking with people, seeing if you find something that fits." 

"I'm so sorry, Angela. I didn't realize you felt like that after Kirk." 

"Yeah, well. You helped a lot. And Hodgins. I'm very happy now. Can we finally start going?" 

"Yes, I think I'm ready." 

*** Brennan ends up really enjoying the people in the group, although some of them end up slightly put-off by her intense questions about romantic orientations and libido and what they think of the possibility that love is nothing but chemical reactions in the brain. Eventually, she finds a few pamphlets with some different labels that she can look at. Of course she had heard of quite many of them during the evening and although her brain did collect all the information, she did enjoy getting reading materials.

She finds a particular term especially interesting.  
"Demiromantic, I know 'demi' is Greek for half, as in the demi-gods of Greek myth. But I don't quite understand what that label means," she says outloud, not really talking to anyone. 

Someone in their early 30s with impressive green hair comes to talk to Brennan, with a smile on her face. 

"Hi! Brennan, was it? I'm Casey. I'm demiromantic myself, so I think I'd explain it like this. Using 'demi-' in the label is supposed to denote how we're halfway between aromantic and well, -romantic or non-aromantic people. Not quite either one, because if you're demiromantic, it means that you have the capacity to develop romantic attraction to people you have a close bond with. I know, some people say 'isn't that everyone?' but no, while developing romantic attraction towards total strangers isn't necessarily that common, lots of people need a lot less to start wanting to do romantic things with people they are attracted to. With us 'demiros', usually we need a strong friendship before we can ever contemplate romance with someone. Although some people have an easier time bonding. The main thing is, there needs to be an emotional bond that romantic attraction is build upon. God, that was a word-salad, although unfortunately you usually still have to give a presentation like this when you come out," they laugh mostly humorously but there is also clear frustration.

"Interesting. Do you think developing feelings for my partner after about six years, after I've already turned down a romantic relationship with him because I knew we wanted different things in a relationship, and after he has found someone new who he is happy with and who I like, might make me demiromantic?"

Casey sighs and nods understandingly, "A lot of us have been there, Brennan. It definitely sounds like you could be, if you want to use the label." 

Suddenly, Brennan has a huge smile on her face, "Is there a flag?" 

"Let me show you!" 

*** 

When Angela finds Brennan later, Brennan excitedly holds up a small flag with a black triangle, thin green stripe, white top and gray bottom half.

"I'm demiromantic!" she says excitedly. 

"You found a label? I'm so happy for you! Where did you get that flag? I wanna get myself a bi one." 

Brennan takes her to the same place Casey took her and soon Angela and Brennan both wave their flags happily. But it is starting to be late, and Angela is tired. Brennan drives her home and they share one final hug for the day. 

"I love you, Brennan." 

"I love you, too, Ange." 

Brennan drives home, happy and hopeful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 114 hits; 8 kudos; 4.6.2018  
> Wrote a sequel for FandomAce(Aspec)Fest2k18.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Demiromantic Coming Out](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14813648) by [Nocticola](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nocticola/pseuds/Nocticola)




End file.
